This month marks the twentieth anniversary of Screaming Trees frontman and solo artist Mark Lanegan’s sixth studio album Bubblegum. With this milestone, comes the release of Bubblegum XX, a deep dive into Lanegan’s most iconic works, where it goes beyond the already expansive album. One of the qualities that made the album special was the wide range of artists that contributed to the tracklist. Such musicians that appeared included PJ Harvey, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs and Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin of Guns N’ Roses. With the release of the anniversary box set, comes several outtakes and previously unreleased tracks that featured even more guest musicians, one of these unreleased tracks includes the duet with Beck on the track “Union Tombstone”.
A full-band outtake, the track was written and recorded with him in mind for a vocal duet. Their schedules didn’t align at the time, but when plans were being made for Bubblegum XX, executive producer Brian Klein, who was Lanegan’s manager during the recording of Bubblegum, was able to locate the session files and approached Beck to see if they could finally make it happen. The final result is exactly how Mark intended it to be and was mixed by longtime Lanegan collaborator Soulsavers.
“Union Tombstone’s” gravelly sung vignettes are exceptionally haunting, between the vocals of Langan and Beck, the duo are in complete sync with each other. The album Bubblegum was already distinct with a dark, nocturnal and introspective tone that captured the feeling of someone who lived on the edge of the earth, “Union Tombstone” further enhances that sentiment with an even more gritty track. Fusing folk, blues and alternative/indie, “Union Tombstone” is just an example of the many well-crafted songs that Bubblegum housed and an even better example of the special chemistry between Lanegan and the guest musicians that appeared on the album.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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